


if our demons cannot dance

by iridescentrey



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Rated E for later chapters, Redemption, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn, Soul Bond, and they'll get some, basically welcome to my Michael and Mallory trapped at the Outpost 3 together fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:52:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentrey/pseuds/iridescentrey
Summary: She’s been here before, walked the same path. Once, a long time ago. Almost feels like another lifetime. There was only one Mallory then, a whole, not an accumulation of scattered pieces with jagged edges that never quite fit together.





	if our demons cannot dance

> “I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you. I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me. If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.”
> 
> _Nikita Gill_

* * *

She’s been here before, walked the same path. Once, a long time ago. Almost feels like another lifetime. There was only one Mallory then, a whole, not an accumulation of scattered pieces with jagged edges that never quite fit together. Everything was clouded then, unclear. Their future, and whatever tomorrow might bring them. Her vision. Her thoughts, hazy with something she didn’t - couldn’t -  understand. Her feelings, with so many new layers of grief, still unsettled. It was a funeral march they walked, but an inverted one. It had been the Earth that died. Why were _they_ the ones descending underground in a metal coffin?

 

But back then, in some twisted way, it made sense. There was safety waiting for them behind the elevator door. Something was merciful enough to grant her a promise of salvation. Destiny, luck, a mere coincidence. That Mallory did not believe in God. There was nothing outside to come back to, nothing but a corpse of the planet she loved. A shadow of its past self, just like her. Nothing left to be done, no way to fix things. It didn’t feel like a betrayal when she left it there to rot.

 

It’s all different now. Verdure coats the hills around them, more lush and green and alive than before it had all died. The skies are crystal clear, soft blue stretching all the way to where it pales at the horizon between the hills. It’ll soon start to melt, change into a brilliant mosaic of saffron, honey, and rubies. She’s seen so many sunsets in her life. Never thought much of them. The scent of sweltering summer rays still lingers in the air and she takes it all in, every single breath. Warmth dances on her skin but it weakens. Shadows are long on the grass, getting longer. It’s not enough. It’s too soon for the day to be over.

 

Rusty hinges of the broken-down gate creak and she sees it, onyx black of the spiral against the green as it pulls in and swallows all the light in its vicinity. She thought she’d cry, looking at it, thought she’d run. But her eyes are dry and so is the dust beneath her boots, a circle of dirt still bare where it had been burned to the core. Her feet stay still.

 

Miss Cordelia and Coco are with her, but she’s on her own. There’s only so far they can go before they have to turn back and leave, back into the blue-greens and fresh breeze. It’ll be nighttime by then. From one darkness into the other, safer. They’ll shake the one she’ll drown in like it’s nothing, a bad dream. _Considering how eagerly you accepted the death sentence they’ve put over your head, I thought you’d be more excited._ It’s her decision. _Really?_ Hers and hers alone. _Do you really think they wouldn’t make you if you hadn’t agreed?_

They don’t speak a single word. It’s still too loud. Cold marble presses against her back as she settles down, face towards the sun and Coco on her right, sobbing. She tries to hold to hold it back, fails. Mallory wishes she would stop, but she’d never say anything. They wait until the last of the sun rays are gone, until they can’t chase them any longer, even on their tip-toes.

 

Mouth of the elevator mocks her, gaping and rotten.

 

_Then_

The levee breaks in her mind, memories flood her and she’s drowning. Layers of different selves peel off like old paint but don’t fall down, they intermingle and she’s _scattered._ Suffocated, in false ideas and gray clothes. There’s been a plan, she knows. Every part of it she agreed to, her past self. Past and present blend in front of her eyes.

 

They’ve buried her deep and painted her in new colors, everything to hide her from him. Strings pulled, golden tickets and absent souls, just to get her and Coco into this place. Concilium, just enough to make an insecure woman want to lie and ignore the orders she’s been given, to cross the line. To get his attention. Apples and a bit of snake venom, blood and acid on the floor to make him believe he’s won.

 

They’re all here now. It’s time to spring the trap. Wiring burns with a wave of Cordelia’s hand, Miriam Mead dies for the second time.

 

.

 

“No wonder this band of buffoons felt the need to resort to treason and murder to solve their problems.” The trail of ash and smoke follows them when they come back after the execution. There’s more of it, seeping out of Myrtle’s cigarette. “Their school was built over a literal hellhole.”

 

.

 

They lie side by side on the scorched ground, him and her; dark stain, like blood seeping from their bodies and blending into one. Gazes locked, hair scattered in halos, breaths slow and limbs heavy with lead. Calm after the hurricane that willed at once to destroy and create, chaos and order concurrent in perfect harmony.

 

He’d followed her outside. Something had gone wrong, they couldn’t stop him and he was right there. Healing light trickled into the cold soil from her fingertips when he found her; death began pouring from his. Futile. Dance-like fight, purple bruises blooming, battered joints and cut-off airways. Her hair came free, legs tangled in too-long skirts. Opposite polls in collision, incinerated. The world imploded.

 

They lie side by side on the scorched ground, him and her. They burn their way out of consciousness under the skies of azure blue.

 

.

 

She’s hurled into the waking world for the second time that day, Miss Cordelia’s brown eyes on hers, mind blank like a sheet of paper. She expects to find him next to her, can almost feel him beside her but he’s gone. Nothing but burned grass. Dead, just moments after it sprung from the Earth born anew. Her fingers search through the empty spaces and _he’s gone._

 

She tries scrambling to her feet but something had to have gone wrong, terribly wrong. The horizon tilts, the ground won’t stay still and she falls, back down on her hands and knees, scraped palms digging into the dirt. He’s gone. It didn’t work. None of it worked, the oxygen’s gone from the atmosphere. Her lungs constrict with every desperate attempt to breathe.

 

Warm palms on her back. Someone calls her name. Gentle circles, arms around her as she finally takes a ragged breath through the curtain of blond hair. “You did it. It’s over.”

 

When the world burned, it took her words. There’s none left, nothing but the taste of blood and acid, still raw on her tongue.

 

“We’ve got him.”

 

_Now_

Langdon’s already there when they arrive, resting against the portal frame as far as he can go without crossing the invisible line. All pride and defiance, no sign of the broken shell of a man they’d left behind in that very spot all those months ago. As if all of it had been nothing but an act; the terror when he realized he’d been nothing more than a pawn in the Coven’s game, master manipulator finally outsmarted; anger, when he emerged from the Outpost, weakened and battered, just to watch the results of everything he’s ever worked for turn to nothing; desperation, when he realized he wasn’t strong enough to stop it.

 

The smirk on his face tells a different story. One where he’s still on top, despite everything that happened. And them? They’ve just yet to catch up.

 

It’s eerie, seeing him again, real and tangible. More than just a nightmare, more than a thought. He’s pale in the candlelight, features distorted by the shadows, angles sharp. Almost inhuman.

 

“Look who decided to grace me with their presence.” He doesn’t look at her when he speaks, but she can _feel_ it. “Did I do anything in particular? To deserve visitors?” His presence, stronger than ever before. It brushes against her mind, slithers in between the pieces of her like a snake. An acknowledgment. Chills down her spine, breath hitching. She pushes it away, but to no avail. “I thought you made it clear the last time you paid me a visit. I’m to rot down here completely alone.”

 

The last word reverberates through the hall, through her thoughts. He was never alone. Coco looks her way, eyes still swollen and red. They shouldn’t have taken her along.

 

Her Supreme steps forward, leaves them behind to stop right across from him. Chin up, she’s unbreakable. They might just as well be close enough to touch, it wouldn’t change a thing. Still, he doesn’t yield. “You know perfectly well what you’ve done,” she says.

 

Mallory won’t ever get a chance to be like that. She won’t be there to follow in her footsteps, take her place someday. _To see her fall. You’re right, I’d be crushed to miss that, too._ She’s not the first and not the last one to have her time cut short. It’s- _infuriating, isn’t it?_ This is how it works.

 

“But this ends, now,” Cordelia says.

 

She could go. Turn around and run, far away from all of them, run and let everything-

 

“No, what exactly have I done this time?” He cocks his head to the side. “I’m trapped here, am I not? I’m down here while the Earth is festering with six billion people you revived, and I can assure you, none of them were saints.” Arms behind his back, he straightens. Towers over them. “Yet somehow, all the accusations fall onto me. You wound me, Cordelia.”

 

“Don’t trouble yourself with lying.”

 

“I haven’t lied.”

 

“We know what you’ve done to her.” Cordelia’s voice is sharp, no mercy in it.

 

“Perhaps you don’t know your students as well as you’d like to think you do,” he says with a smirk. His eyes roam the half-shaded spaces, won’t rest on her. “Everyone has darkness inside of them.” She feels watched anyway. “Even those you’d least suspect of it.”

 

“Not that kind of darkness.”

 

“No?”

 

She seethes with venom, dark, rotten. See? W _e’re all one and the same._ “Something so vile and corrupting could only come from the likes of you.”

 

He bursts with laughter; it chimes and echoes in the void, makes it deeper, endless. Was this place always so empty? So cold? Gooseflesh rises on her tulle-covered skin; freezing, stale air clings to it. Fingers numb, clenched tight around the handle of a bag with everything she owns now.

 

“What, did it make you afraid for your life? For those you care about?” He sighs, theatrical, glimmer of tears in his eyes. “Tragic, truly.” Even in the confines of his prison, even with his powers thwarted, he’s everywhere. “You act like I’m the worst thing to ever walk this planet, yet here you are. No scruples about going through with your plan.”

 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“Oh, I think I do.” He clicks his tongue. “Aren’t you going to beg me to release her?”

 

“We know that wouldn’t work.” _But wouldn’t that be a sight to behold._

“I’ve always known you were a viper, Cordelia. And you haven’t changed.” He prowls from side to side, predator in a cage. “Still ruining lives of others for the benefit of your own.” Teeth and claws hungry for blood, anyone’s. “But to condemn a soul once so dear to you to an eternity of torment?” Maybe his eyes flicker to her, maybe it’s just a trick of light. “Only God could be so cruel.”

 

_Then_

“How did you do it?”

 

Madison’s heels echo against the stone walls. It’s just the three of them now. He’ll be alone when he wakes, nothing but a ghost of cigarette smoke still in the air.

 

He looks so much younger like this, almost innocent. Defenseless. Blond hair in disarray and a soft curve of his cheek, ripped suit and scrape-covered skin. Candlelight dances on his closed eyelids. Motionless, except for a steady rise and fall of his chest. Just a boy. Not the man who destroyed the world.

 

“You’re the next Supreme. I get it. But this?” They all look like this, blood stains and soot, dark circles beneath lifeless eyes. Her fingers tremble around a cigarette. “The healing itself should’ve drained you. You should be dead.”

 

“I know.”

 

Invisible energy flickers on the particles of dust. The shield covers the portal and stretches, all the way around the Outpost, not a single spot to break through. She prods all around it, searching. Just to make sure.

 

“We blasted him with everything we’ve got. He just got up and walked the fuck away. Nobody should be that fucking powerful.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I’m talking about you.”

 

.

 

It’s like waking up from a dream, an eighteen-month long nightmare. Her sisters all praise her, strangers on the street don’t know her name. To the rest of the world, the apocalypse never happened. The bombs never fell. In her dreams, they fall every night.

 

.

 

It starts with a feeling, barely a phantom. The shock wears off and she’s haunted; confusion, anger, pain, fear. A lone tear streams down from the corner of her eye as she lies in bed, something foreign shakes through her bones. She pushes it all down, the need to scream, the need to-

 

She thought she’d be free. Once her old self finally came back to her. She got a puzzle in her place, a handful of scattered, mismatched pieces, edges to rough to fit back together. There’s a girl that turned flowers into butterflies, soul bright like a star and nothing but innocence. A stranger in glasses, voice and movements all wrong. She runs after another stranger, one wearing Coco’s face. A meek servant in gray, never owning anything of her own. Craving, hungry; she left behind calloused palms and hunched shoulders. There’s something else in there, too, something more. Something that wasn’t there before.

 

There’s not enough place in her body. Too much, yet she’s empty. Hunger, greed. It all comes back.

 

You saved the world, they tell her. You saved everyone. It’s not enough. She craves more and she’s furious and it’s not like her, it doesn’t _feel_ like her. _Doesn’t it? Everyone has dark places._ She doesn’t. _No?_ It’s not her. Not all of it.

Her knuckles burn, unmarred. Fire burns underneath her eyelids.

 

.

 

When she wakes up, her throat is raw from screams that never left it.

 

.

 

Winter winds come and leave; the girls keep turning the petals into reds, yellows, and blues, oblivious. It’s not their fault they don’t remember how they died. In this world, they never did. They can carry the burden, those that remember. _Like good little martyrs you are._ She mirrors their smiles. Maybe someday she’ll mirror their wonder, too.

 

.

 

Sometimes he’s there when the bombs fall in her dreams. He holds her hand but she rips it out of his grasp. The destroyer of worlds falters.

 

.

 

_I wish I was so good at ignoring things. Would make life easier._

The anger has waned, in its place something akin to determination. To survive. To forget the rot that grows inside her. It’s tentative, the way it spreads inside her and from her. It hangs heavy in the air, digs into minds of those around her. Before, there was brightness everywhere she went. She smiles and wishes it was honest. They smile back and she knows they aren’t.

 

She stays away for the most part, buries herself in the smell of roses and drowns her thoughts in the blades of grass. Coco keeps her company, a silent apology for things the stranger with her face had done. Mallory doesn’t blame her.

 

“Something’s wrong, Coco,” she whispers. “Something’s wrong with me.” She has to feel it, doesn’t she? _Maybe she learned that from you. Denial._

 

“We’ve all been through a lot.” She means well. “You have every right to feel the way you feel.” Part of her still seethes with hate, and she hates it back.

 

.

 

“That’s impossible darling,” Myrtle says. “The shield we created is impenetrable, we all made sure of that.” Metal spoon clinks against the porcelain, too loud in the silence filling the room. “He’s stuck in there until the end of times. And longer.”

 

Miss Cordelia is stiff beside her, eyes cast down. Morning light bleeds through the lacy curtains, dim and gray.

 

Myrtle sighs. “This world is as cruel as it is beautiful, my child. We have to take it for what it is. Not every dark deed people commit is the work of the devil.”

 

It’s spread further, dissolved in the air, a dome of darkness reaching further and further. Her at the center. She’s the poison. It’s all so close to them, too close, there’s too much happening- _Listen to the old bat for once._ She flinches.

“I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about.” _Listen._ “Don’t trouble yourself-”

 

“He’s in my head.” There’s only so much running that can be done. “He’s been talking to me.”

 

.

 

Dinah Stevens murmurs spells into the night air, hushed whispers and crackling words bleed into one. Wide, circular room; white fabric of the curtains flows in the wind, ghost in the candlelight. Shadows lurk at the corners of her vision, envelop her thoughts. Fire rises all the way up to the ceiling, it doesn’t chase them away.

 

“There’s nothing that can be done to break it.” The Voodoo Queen opens her eyes, black as coal in turbid darkness.“This magic is old, older than anything I’ve seen.”

 

Miss Cordelia is behind her and Mallory is glad. She can’t stand to see the pain in her eyes. “Dinah, I’m begging you.”

 

“Your little plan failed. He might be trapped for now, but he’s got his claws wrapped around her entire being. And he’s not letting go. Whether he created the bond intentionally or not.” The fire dims to barely a flicker. “She’s his way out. A doorway.”

 

“There has to be something we can do.” She doesn’t need to see Cordelia’s eyes. Her voice is enough. Shaky, weak.

 

“There is one thing you can do. If you want to keep him in there.”

 

Cordelia hesitates, for a second there’s nothing but silence. Even in her thoughts, he listens. “You said he wouldn’t come for the second time. Besides-”

 

“I’m not talking about Papa Legba.”

 

.

 

He asked for too much, the last time they called for him. Miss Cordelia had told her. Even if he came, it wouldn’t change anything. Her soul, the souls of other girls, it’s one and the same. She’s not worth any more than they are.

 

“We’ll find a way.” Manicured nails dig into the skin of her shoulder but she doesn’t flinch. Something boils in her, deep, deep beneath the surface; she drags it deeper. The impulse to swat Cordelia’s hand away is still there. “I promise.”

 

Flames fade into glimmers, red into blue.

 

.

Coco cries all day when she finally caves and tells her. Some of it. Some she keeps out. It’s for the best. Pearl-like tears, loud curses and bargains, she barely leaves Mallory’s side. Despair turns into determination and they scour through the biggest accumulation of magical knowledge in the world, page by page, word by word. They bury themselves in the scent of parchment.

 

They all help. Zoe, Queenie, even Madison. Embers turn back into flames, a light at the end of the tunnel. She smothers a chuckle coming from the distant corner of her mind.

 

_Now_

Coco steps forward and she’s left alone, nobody by her side. “Wait, eternity?”

 

“I am doing what I have to do.” Cordelia’s voice shakes now, cracks in her mask of confidence. She hated seeing it, that mask. It made her doubt. Wonder if she cared at all. _She cares, she doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. The outcome, my dear, is one and the same._ “If there was any other way-”

 

“Let’s get it over with,” she speaks for the first time since they descended, much more confident than what she feels. “Please.” She needs to get in there, now, before her legs take her far, far away. _You’d be doing us both a favor._ Before she falls apart. There’s barely anything keeping the puzzle together.

 

“What do you mean _eternity_?”

 

“With all the education you claim to have,” he says, careless,  not bothering to as much as turn in Coco’s direction, “I’m surprised a term so simple would elude you.”

 

Mallory lifts her eyes and they burn, they could burn right through him. “Don’t talk to her like that.” Their gazes finally lock. He tilts his head, eyebrow raised. Amusement rolls off of him like ripples through the water. She won’t be the first one to look away. Part of her wants to. The part that was terrified when he stroked her cheek and dug out what was buried deep, deep inside her.

 

“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Coco’s almost screaming now, eyes searching, looking for answers. Anywhere. Him, her, Miss Cordelia. They shouldn’t have taken her.

 

“What did you think was going to happen?” He turns his gaze away, only now she can see how heavy it was. How weighted down she was. “That your friend was going to come over for a tea party and go home?”

 

“No, but-”

 

“Do you think I’d be standing here before you if it were that easy? If this place trapped nothing but physical bodies?” _Still don’t want to run?_ She does. _Do it, then._ She can’t.

 

“Did you know about this?” There’s panic in her eyes, still searching. She won’t find the answers. A fighter, defiant and proud in a way she’s sometimes despised but now will _miss._ It won’t do any good now. “I veto, this is bullshit,” she says and approaches the portal. “It’s not happening.”

 

“We don’t have a choice,” Cordelia says, back against the wall, curtain of hair almost enough to separate her from Langdon’s gaze. She looks so much older now, worn to a frazzle. The mask is gone.

 

“There must be another way, something we didn’t think of.”

 

“Coco-”

 

“Locking her up with this psychopath was a fucked up idea to begin with, but this? This is fucking insane.”

 

“There’s nothing we can do.” Cordelia breaks. It spills over, tears down her cheeks, too much to contain it. “We’ve tried everything. I don’t- There’s nothing. Nothing I can do to keep her from ending up in there anyway.” She turns away, a couple of steps further, not far enough. Sick sense of satisfaction drizzles through the bond.

 

Mallory’s feet carry her closer, to him, to them. “She could still fight, she could live her life-”

 

A sharp tug on Coco’s arm, a plea. She ignores the resistance, pulls her in. An unsteady embrace, like holding a panicked child. She’s so much taller than Mallory, older. It doesn’t feel like that now. “Shh.” She can’t stand another person crying for her.

 

“Mallie, you can’t-”

 

Deep breaths. “Listen to me.” She needs to sound confident, reassuring. For her. “None of you would be safe around me if I stayed.” She tries, so hard.

 

_Then_

 

In her dreams, they dance. Fabric flows and shimmers in thousands of colors, iridescent black breaks apart and bathes the world in rainbows. No music, nothing but heartbeats. Wild drums in harmony. It always ends on the ground, skin against skin, fingers digging into throats and sharp blades cutting through their flesh. They consume one another, the world catches fire and finishes off what they’ve left. Handle of the knife digs into her palm.

 

The fires are out when she opens her eyes, metal still blazing hot against her fingertips. Ashes gone, blown away. There’s nothing but Miss Cordelia’s eyes again, her eyes and no oxygen. Sleep-hazed and terrified below her, breath hitching, throat convulsing against the blade.

 

The knife makes no sound as it drops onto the sheets; bare feet thump against the ground as they carry her away, into the cold, dew-covered grass. Not cold enough to soothe the memories of inferno. She needs to wake up, needs it to be a dream. She prays for it with eyes wide open. There are only two pairs of eyes she can see when she closes hers, and she doesn’t want to see either.

 

In his little corner, he’s silent.

 

.

 

It’s almost dawn when footsteps follow the path she’d crossed in the darkest hour of the night. Dew and tears mingle, bone-deep shivers shake her. Miss Cordelia calls her name and she’s already up, legs trembling, feet numb. “Stay away from me.” Words drown in her sobs.

 

“Mallie.” Disheveled, face twisted with pain and weariness but she’s alive, she’s alright. All the blood still locked down in their dreams.

 

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She steps back but she drowns, frowns in a warm embrace; they tumble back down and her limbs are too weak to resist. “Please.”

 

“You won’t hurt me.” Quivering fingers brush through Mallory’s hair, but the comfort doesn’t reach her. Lost between her fears. “It wasn’t you, Mallie. It wasn’t you.”

 

Time stretches as they weep, seconds longer with every tear. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help.” It seems so obvious now, why she never felt free. She wasn’t. She’s been held captive from the very moment he laid his eyes on her. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

 

.

 

Only a handful of them know. For the rest, she’s simply leaving. Someplace good, a place where the sun will keep on rising and setting like it always does, where the stars will align for her and she’ll make wishes as she watches them fall.

 

She takes in every detail, imprints it in her memory. Blades of grass brush through the spaces between her fingers; leaves still soft and pliable. They’ll start turning yellow soon. She’ll remember them as green.

 

_Now_

“I’d never forgive myself if he hurt any of you. If he got out because of me.” Coco’s tears soak into her shoulder. “I’ll be okay.” _Lies._ “I’ve made my peace with it.”

 

 _I’ve always despised that. People lying to make others feel better._ “If you have anything to tell me,” she lets go of Coco and turns towards him, “you can say that out loud.”

 

“Some things are only between the two of us,” he says, voice velvet soft. “Start getting used to that. There won’t be any other company for quite a while.” His eyes are like magnets, but he’s never needed them to pull people in. To look right through them and mold their very essence to his will.

 

Cordelia looks at her, inquisitive. “It’s nothing.” It’s just like before. Before she learned to keep it all in, to hold back her reactions. “Get on with this.”

 

.

 

“You’re really doing this, aren’t you? Leaving her at my mercy?” He stands tall above them, eyes looking down to where they sit on the floor.

 

Clink of ingredient bottles bleeds into one with Cordelia’s chant; it drifts, lazy and melodic. Too beautiful for the spell they’re performing. She lets go, lets her mind float with it. Blood trickles slowly from a cut in her wrist, into the bowl. She let them do it. Refused to touch the knife.

 

“I could do anything I wanted to her and you’d be powerless to stop it.”

 

Cordelia raises her blood-shot eyes from the spell-work, just for a heartbeat. “Bold of you to assume she would let you.”

 

“We’ll see about that,” he says, indecipherable smile and a gleam in his eyes that makes her want to heave.

 

Coco huffs. “If you as much as try-”

 

“Then what?”

 

“He’s bluffing,” Cordelia interjects. “He’d say anything to keep his influence on the surface.”

 

“Am I?” He lowers down to their level, head tilted towards her. “Am I bluffing, Mallory?” Anger rolls off of him in waves, pure, amorphous emotion. Undirected, boiling underneath the surface, where no one else could see. “She’s the reason I found myself bound to this hellhole for the rest of my mortal and immortal life.” It cracks. “Did you truly think I’d welcome her with arms wide open?”

 

Cordelia gets up, bowl in hand. Eyes glossy like the black vessel she holds. “It doesn’t matter. None of what you say will change anything.” The words sting; cut on her wrist burns as the skin closes up. Coco helps her up, blood stains both of them.

 

.

 

Almost time. There’s void in her guts and in her mind, because if she thinks, if she realizes, she’ll run. Her eyes burn, but they’re dry. Fire, as always, with nothing to soothe her.

 

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia says and if her voice had been broken before, now it’s shattered. “Every time I’ve failed as a Supreme in the past, I promised myself I’d never let that happen again, at any cost. I’d never fail any of my girls again. But here we are again and I’m- I don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.”

 

“Please,” Mallory whispers, “don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.” They both try to smile; one through the tears, one through the fear. There’ nothing left for her to say. Warm arms around her, for the last time; floral scent in Cordelia’s locks. The memory will have to do. A palm settles against her cheek, grounding.

 

She doesn’t want to go.

 

“You’re strong, Mallory. So much stronger than you know. Stronger than him.”

 

“I know,” she says because it’s the only thing that won’t break them any more.

 

.

 

“Promise me, promise you won’t let that piece of shit hurt you.” They’ve been tangled together for what seems like hours. Maybe they could stay a little longer, maybe she could go outside one more time. Just once. See the stars, watch them get pale and disappear in the sunrise. _You could still leave. You could break them with a flick of your finger._

“I promise.” If she steps outside, even for a second, she won’t come back.

 

“No, listen. I’ll visit in some time, and you better be in one piece when I come, you hear me?” Voice muffled by Mallory’s arm, hoarse from crying.

 

She disentangles herself, it’s too soon. It’ll always be. Their arms won’t let go.

 

“How heartfelt. Even I was touched. Despite the insult.”

 

She ignores him, as much as she can. It’s difficult when they’re mere feet apart, when she can almost feel his breath on her skin. When in a few minutes she’ll find herself on the other side, trapped. _We’re already trapped with one another._

Cordelia’s hand trembles as she reaches into the bowl. “You’ll have two minutes to cross when the spell is cast,” she says. “It only works one way.” Her eyes lift to Langdon. “So don’t think you can try anything.” _You’d think we’d be on first name basis already._

 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

Fingers still mixing the ingredients, she makes no move. Why drag it out? “Ready?”

 

No. “Yes.” Another incantation as the powder hits the invisible surface separating the world from her grave. One last look at them both. She won’t turn around again. “Step aside,” she tells him.

 

_Turn around._

“No. Step aside.”

 

He sighs, lips pursed together. Then he does. A clear pathway for her, through the portal, along the corridor. She’s walked this way before. Lifetimes ago. She walks forward and they don’t stop her, she walks by him and he lets her pass. All the way through the corridor, the stairs, the balcony. She’s walked this way before, hundreds of times. There are no footsteps behind her.

 

 _Giving up so easily. I’m disappointed._ That doesn’t mean she will stop fighting.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you think. [Come scream at me on tumblr if you liked it!](http://deanfinite.tumblr.com/)


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